1. Introduction: How has marketing 
    changed?
    “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, 
    communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for 
    customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
    - (American Marketing Association website, 2013)
   • A focus on markets, what they are and how they are constituted or shaped.
   • A service dominant view of markets and marketing: moving from an output- or 
    (goods)-centred focus to a process (service)-centred focus. Here service is 
    conceptualised as ‘the process of doing something for and with another party 
    and is thus always dynamic and collaborative’ (2009: 221)
    How have consumers changed?
    • Huge strides in computing technology mean that consumers are increasingly 
    informed because they are networked globally.
    • Consumer co-creation:  this movement identifies the co-creation of value in 
    markets and places the consumer in a reciprocal relationship with the organisation.
    • Processes, which empower consumers, not only through the operation of extra 
    knowledge regarding products and services, but also through the ability to connect 
    with
    • Introduction to like-minded others and share experiences in online brand and 
    consumer communities.
    • Consumers are also routinely involved in the process of product design in design 
    workshops or through design competitions.
    How have consumers changed?
    • Sustainability is ‘a trend that is simultaneously economic, political, cultural, 
    philosophic and technological in
    • nature; that is vast in scope; and which reflects the economic, political, cultural, 
    philosophic and technological milieu of its day’ (Mittelstaedt et al., 2014: 254).
    • The Developmental School of Macromarketing argues that marketing offers an 
    important set of tools to promote the development and welfare of wider society
    •  Scholars have made a series of suggestions as to how we should go about doing this: 
    bearing responsibility for the environmental impact of the choices we make; thinking 
    about consumption not as a political right but rather as a responsibility; breaking the 
    link between consumption and carbon emissions; and putting an end to seeing the 
    propensity to consume as the natural state of humans (Kilbourne and Mittelstaedt, 
    2012: 297–8).
   2. Postmodern marketing and 
   beyond
   • The postmodern era signalled a major change in Western thinking and 
    philosophising. Over its fifty-year history, postmodernism spread to affect 
    all disciplines and branches of knowledge, including marketing, where it 
    has made its biggest impact in relation to the understanding of consumers.
   • Marketing and consumption have been pinpointed as key phenomena of 
    the postmodern era (Baudrillard, 1988; Brown, 1995, 1998; Firat et al., 
    1995).
   • The emphasis is on product intangibles, such as brand name and overall 
    image. The image becomes the marketable entity and the product strives 
    to represent its image rather than vice versa.